Posted 2:46 PM by Robert

Ticked Off in London?

UPDATE: Several erudite readers have written to tell me that in British slang, "to tick off" can mean "to reprimand, disparage, dismiss." So Ms. Smith's sentence means, "I have lost count of the times I have been reprimanded in recent months, sometimes by quite senior politicians, for suggesting that George W Bush is a complete idiot."

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Having innocently linked to one of those interesting quotes on the side of More Than Zero, I found myself reading the opening sentence in a standard-issue (if a little coy) "George Bush is stupid" article originally from the London Newspaper "The Independent":

"I have lost count of the times I have been ticked off in recent months, sometimes by quite senior politicians, for suggesting that George W Bush is a complete idiot."

Now, I realize this is a London writer, and British and American usage can differ. But I have never seen "ticked off" used in this way. In fact, I can't quite figure out what meaning it is supposed to have as it is used in this article.

At first I thought the writer - Joan Smith - was saying "I have lost count of the times I have been made angry in recent months, sometimes at quite senior politicians, for their suggesting that George W Bush is a complete idiot."

But Ms. Smith's sentence doesn't seem to say that. In fact, if one suppresses the parenthetical (", sometimes by quite senior politicians,"), the sentence reads: "I have lost count of the times I have been ticked off in recent months... for suggesting that George W Bush is a complete idiot." By my understanding of the normal rules of English grammar, this is what the sentence is supposed to mean. But that sentence seems to say that Ms. Smith many times made herself angry by her own suggestions that "George W Bush is a complete idiot,” which doesn't seem likely. After all, if she's making herself angry in this way, she can just stop making such suggestions - and there's no need to bring it to her readership's attention.

Then I thought that there might be one of those British/American nuances going on. Maybe Ms. Smith means that she has made uncountably many other people (especially senior politicians) angry ("ticked off") when she repeatedly suggested to them that "George W Bush is a complete idiot." But a quick and, admittedly, incomplete scan through the 25,400 responses to my Yahoo! advanced search under "ticked off" did not yield a single obvious use of the term with this meaning.

What to do?

Well, I still think that Ms. Smith means to say: "I have lost count of the times I have been made angry in recent months, sometimes at quite senior politicians, for their suggesting that George W Bush is a complete idiot."

But it is troubling that she expresses herself in what can only be considered "halting English." You'd think she'd be fluent by now.

Whatever it is that she's really getting mad at, it seems to be happening a lot.